Broken links to slides within the presentation

[Bob]

PPT 2002

I've got a presentation with around 250 slides. It'll eventually be viewed
in kiosk mode and relies solely on buttons and text with hyperlinks to other
slides in the same presentation for navigation around the presentation.
There are no links to anything outside of the presentation. I estimate there
are at least 4,000 links in the presentation - most of them created with the
Action Settings command. Some of them created with the Hyperlink command.

The presentation is saved locally on my computer. I frequently save
presentations as new versions with incrementally higher version numbers -
all in the same folder. As I get close to the end of the presentation design
and revision I'm proofing the hyperlinks for accuracy. I'm beginning to
notice that links to other slides in the presentation that I've previously
repaired seem to have broken. Is this inevitable with a presentation this
size. Are the links doomed to deteriorate over time, even if I manage to get
them all working at the same time?

I notice there are lots of posts about broken links to objects outside a
presentation. This isn't my situation. I'm trying to figure out what I can
expect from PPT in this type of situation.

Thanks in advance,

Bob

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

See "Lost hyperlinks, hyperlinks link to wrong place, hyperlinks stop
working" from the PPT FAQ:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00401.htm

You seem to have hit the hyperlink limit.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[Bob]

Thank you, David. Looks like I may have to break up the presentation into
multiple presentations with links between them.

Bob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thank you, David. Looks like I may have to break up the presentation into
multiple presentations with links between them.

That's one approach (and probably the best, if it lends itself well to what
you're doing).

Another is to replace the title placeholder text of your linked-to slides with
something simple like "Slide 123". But first duplicate the title placeholder.

So you end up with:

REAL title text placeholder containing short text; this you'll drag off the
screen so nobody ever sees it

COPY of title text placeholder containing your title text; this stays on
screen for public consumption, but PPT won't use it when creating links.

See, PPT uses the slide title as part of the link info; the longer your slide
titles, the sooner you hit The Wall of HyperLink Death.

 

[Bob]

Thanks, Steve.
Your suggestion did cross my mind after I read that the larger the number of
characters in linked slide titles, the smaller the number of possible links
within the presentation. I decided against this approach for the time being.
I was afraid that even with abbreviated slide titles I'd still run out of
usable links.

Now that I've successfully broken the presentation into smaller
presentations I have some new problems. Some (like the Previous Slide action
button not displaying the previous slide if it was from a different
presentation) I can work around. Here's the one that has me stumped:

We'd like the final version of the presentation to be viewed in a web
browser. PPT's Publish as Web Page command seemed to do the job I needed
when all the slides were in one presentation. But now that the slides are in
multiple presentations, it seems that the browser is only able to open the
1st slide of a linked presentation. If I open the PPT.mht file in PPT I
don't have a problem. The problem occurs when viewing the presentation in
the browser window. I tried going back into the .mht file and recreating the
links to the other .mht files, but the Bookmark command in the Edit
Hyperlink dialogue displays a message that there are no bookmarks in the
presentation. Apparently the slide titles function as bookmarks in the .ppt
version, but not in the .mht version. Do you know of any other way to add
bookmarks to the .mht version?

Any suggestions on how to save the multiple presentations so the links will
work in a browser window will be much appreciated. Thanks.

Bob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks, Steve.
Your suggestion did cross my mind after I read that the larger the number of
characters in linked slide titles, the smaller the number of possible links
within the presentation. I decided against this approach for the time being.
I was afraid that even with abbreviated slide titles I'd still run out of
usable links.

Because of the other problems you've mentioned below, it might be worth
pursuing this first possibility. But before going to all that work, try
downloading our free FixLinks demo and running a links report. At the bottom,
it'll give you a very rough idea of the total amount of space your links take
up. You could also run the code here:

Export Slide Number and Title Text to a text file
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00332.htm

to get a file containing just the slide number and title text, which with a
little arithmetic will give you an idea of how much your slide titles are
contributing to the hyperlink total.

Let's see where that stands.

 

[Bob]

Thanks again for your suggestions, Steve.
I've already begun renaming the slide titles of the large presentation to
try and minimize the number of internal link characters. Before I continue I
plan to take your advice and use the FixLinks demo to find out how much
space the links take up. I really appreciate your pointing me to the code
that creates a file with the slide number and related slide title. I knew
I'd need this information if I renamed the slide titles, and I was thinking
I might have to compile it manually. I'll repost if I continue to run into
difficulties.

Bob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks again for your suggestions, Steve.

No problem. And here's another ... I remembered that I'd written some code to
automate the grunt work involved in this. I cleaned it up a bit, gave it a
quick test and posted it on the PPT FAQ.

Promise me you'll only run this on a COPY of your original, then have a look
here:

Convert slide titles to shapes to solve hyperlink limit problems
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00683.htm

 

[Bob]

I got to Slide 200 of 242 and a heard a little voice inside my head say,
"Check the news group for updates". I made a copy of my presentation for
test purposes, as wisely suggested. Thanks for the help.

Bob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Always do what the voices tell you to. The ones in your head, not the Rice
Krispies.

 

[Bob]

Steve,
I'm having some difficulty interpreting the FixLinks report.

Question 1
Under the report heading 'Linked Pictures, Sounds, Media, Shapes with Action
Settings', slides 14-175 seem to indicate that ShapeName "_7" has the
following:
Mouse: M/C
Status: Bad
Link Type: Shape with RUN action setting
File: Reset_Font_Color

I found ShapeName "_7" and checked the settings in the Action Settings
dialog, but no actions are indicated for click or mouse over. There are at
least 4 similar shapes on each of these slides with names "_4" through "_8"
and nothing turned up in the report for these other ShapeNames.

Can you tell me how to interpret the above?

Question 2
Under the Report Hyperlink heading, under the Status or Link column (it's
hard to tell) there are 2 numbers separated by a comma (i.e., 578,18). The
second number appears to be the linked slide number on most slides, but some
ShapeNames have -1,-1. Can you clarify what these notations refer to?

I'm at 20,676 bytes, with more links to add. Can I assume if I rename
Autoshapes to "A-#" I'll conserve link storage space?

Thanks again.

Bob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Steve,
I'm having some difficulty interpreting the FixLinks report.

Hi Bob; comments interdrizzled below ...

Question 1
Under the report heading 'Linked Pictures, Sounds, Media, Shapes with Action
Settings', slides 14-175 seem to indicate that ShapeName "_7" has the
following:
Mouse: M/C
Status: Bad
Link Type: Shape with RUN action setting
File: Reset_Font_Color

That'd probably be a shape with a Run Macro action setting. The bottom of the
links report explains a bit more about why FixLinks reports these as bad.

I found ShapeName "_7" and checked the settings in the Action Settings
dialog, but no actions are indicated for click or mouse over.

That's a bit weird but not impossible; PowerPoint sometimes creates shapes with
duplicate names, though it doesn't allow such a thing. When you rub its face
in it, it gets cranky. It might be worth roundtripping the presentation to
HTML and back; that seems to eliminate dupe shape names.

If you don't have any luck running this one to ground, delete all the slides
but this one (from a COPY of the original, but you know that drill <g>) and
shoot it along to me at steve circled-a pptools dot com

stion 2

Under the Report Hyperlink heading, under the Status or Link column (it's
hard to tell) there are 2 numbers separated by a comma (i.e., 578,18). The
second number appears to be the linked slide number on most slides, but some
ShapeNames have -1,-1. Can you clarify what these notations refer to?

This gives more detail:
Hyperlink .SubAddress - How to interpret it
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00162.htm

Are you sure you're not seeing -1,1 though? That'd be a link to an external
PPT file, Slide 1.

A link to an external file, slide 42 with a slide title would be

-1,42,The Slide's Title

I'm at 20,676 bytes, with more links to add. Can I assume if I rename
Autoshapes to "A-#" I'll conserve link storage space?

No need to bother with the shape names as far as I can tell; they don't seem
to figure into the link storage space.